AFP Videos – France
Piche, drag queen rapper: “Rap belongs to everyone”
“It’s going to rock!”: drag queen Piche takes the stage on Wednesday in Paris for the beginnings of a tour where she claims, with beard and wig, a liberated rap that can be queer and carry “values”. “Drag allowed me to reappropriate this musical style like many other things, generally in my life,” analyzes Piche, during a meeting with AFP a few days before his concert at the Parisian theater Les Etoiles , before a tour from March 2025. Rap allows us to “defend values, messages”, because “it is a grassroots musical movement which is made for people who are oppressed, marginalized, oppressed”, notes the 28-year-old artist, who sees the opportunity for the queer community to “re-appropriate” these codes.”Break the genre, now (…) On your high heels you could well fly away”, he says -she in “Oh ma Piche”, one of the tracks from her EP (7 tracks) “Festin” for which she poses in fishnet tights and boxing gloves and which she will defend in front of a new audience, before future songs .- “Legitimate” -His deep or more melodious voice is placed on compositions tinged with electro, while his lyrics advocate self-affirmation, far from the worn-out themes of the genre, drugs, destitution and success.Piche’s rap doesn’t fit into any box, but nothing could be more normal for the French drag queen of gypsy and Algerian origin, who has been accustomed to non-conformism since a young age and whom her father rejected from the home.”For a long time, I had the feeling that, even though I had a particular attraction to rap, I didn’t necessarily feel justified in being able to listen to this musical genre. Because it didn’t talk about me, because no one looked like me among the people who practiced it,” confides Mike Gautier, his real name. In an environment mainly populated by heterosexual men and partly riddled with homophobic overtones, Piche does not only seek to bring queer rap to life but to demonstrate that this aesthetic is not reserved for “a category of people”. “That’s why I do rap too, to show that it belongs to the whole world, that we can all make it”, explains the rapper, a glittering link between two worlds that are a priori very distant. “It’s the message of hope that I want to convey in my Music and can -be, I believe, for the future”, she believes. – Wig and “big sound” -If she dares to get started, it’s thanks to her twin brother who already practices this music and helps her to shape her own.Previously, the bearded drag had a career as a professional dancer, before becoming known to the general public by participating in the second season of the television competition “Drag Race France” in 2023, then in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris, alongside his friends Nicky Doll and Paloma. In his concerts, dance will be present, “obviously”. For the rest, the rapper doesn’t deny herself anything, from piano-voice to “big sound with autotune”, in a musical universe that wants to be “respectful above all”. Her only fear lies in the level of her numerous “technical constraints”: costumes, nails, corset, fake buttocks… Even if the concert will not be a drag show, the artist does not intend to part with his character. “The only thing I hope is that my wig will stay in place the whole time,” she smiles. In the protean art of drag, Piche has found “total freedom “to express yourself, realize your childhood dreams and constantly reinvent yourself. Yesterday a dancer, today a rapper, and tomorrow? “I am absolutely not closed to anything.”fan/may/jco
